by James Somers
“Excellent. My brother Horva,” said Grod to the entire group of warriors, “it is time for us to go beyond the designs of those who created us as improvements of themselves. We shall remake our own image with a far greater power than we have known before. We shall conquer our oppressors and be free. And if the Baruk should come, we will defeat them as well.”
It was on everyone’s minds that the Baruk were going to come in response to the uprising now that Grod and the Horva were beyond being defeated by the Vorn military. But they would not arrive in time to save their principle base of power here at Baeth Periege.
“As soon as we are beyond the barricade and come into the open square of the city I want my team, with the scientist Varen, to accompany me to the cloning facility. We will take it and begin the regeneration process, while the rest of you attack the main power couplings for the perimeter shield generators. With the shields down our brothers will swarm in and the city will quickly fall. We need not worry if any ships try to escape. It is the city and the cloning facility that we want, not Vorn prisoners. Their time of rule is at an end no matter what.”
He turned to the demolition team and gave the final order. “Detonate the device!”
They complied and up ahead a brilliant blue burst flashed down the tunnel at them. The entire barricade to the rail system tunnel was engulfed in the dispersion field flash, causing the metal and stone to disassociate every molecular bond within the field. The light of the sun shone into the tunnel, and the troops immediately rushed ahead toward the opening.
As they came out of the end of the tunnel and crossed the semicircular smooth crater left in the tunnel floor by the dispersion blast, they could see the rail system’s above ground system of magnetic rings that were spaced out along the remainder of the distance to the cloning lab compound. The rings allowed the rail cars to continue above ground while still being propelled magnetically.
Grod’s group maintained its push down the track toward the cloning lab with Malec personally bringing Varen. Acting as both protector and jailer to Varen, Malec carried the cryo-pod that held Tiet’s genetic samples for use in the regeneration procedure that Varen would be performing on Grod and his Horva.
The hinder group, composed of the remaining two hundred Horva warriors, was splitting off to attack the shield generators. They were already coming under fire from the Vorn military and many of the Vorn’s brutish Horva clones coming in for the fight as well.
The shield attack group laid down heavy firepower as they advanced steadily; blasting many along the way. Clearly the Vorn military had not expected to be attacked from behind their own positions at the city perimeter, allowing the attack team to make steady progress towards its goal. The pulse fire from without the city continued to batter upon the perimeter shield as thousands upon thousands of Grod’s Horva warriors waited to enter Baeth Periege.
Grod and his team met very little resistance in getting to the cloning lab complex entrance. Only a few of the brutish Horva slaves had stood between them and the entrance to the facility. He did not enjoy the fact that they had to be killed. He really did pity the poor creatures. But as they could not be brought from the loathsome state they had been created in—as brutish dumb beasts to be exploited by the Vorn—he thought that truly death was better for them.
Grod and his one hundred warriors rushed into the complex and quickly secured the lab facility they needed for the regeneration. Varen’s identification card, which remained active, had allowed the group quick access to the interior of the facility. Malec gave the cryo-pod to Varen and led him to the control boards.
“Varen,” said Grod, “remember your family! I want this done perfectly or they will suffer.”
“I understand, General,” said Varen with a nervous voice.
Varen tapped the controls and a multitude of the cloning pods opened up, allowing Grod and fifty of his warriors to climb into the horizontally situated units. They first removed their weapons and battle gear with the respective items of clothing and then positioned themselves individually within the pods.
The remaining warriors would ensure that no one interfered with the approximately three hour procedure. No doubt, the shield attack team was getting all of the attention within the city.
Varen secured the pods once they were all situated inside and removed the Barudii genetic material from the cryo-pod. He inserted it into the matrix chamber that housed the parent cloning material during normal procedures and inserted a command disk containing the necessary changes in the standard processes to bring about the automated sequences for a regeneration of the already cloned tissues and the very genetic structures that were embodied within them.
The material within the matrix chamber would be used as an enhancement of the cloned warriors within their own bodies. Once the data was received by the automation system, Varen activated the program and the process began even as the thunderous battle continued to rage within and without the city.
Grod drifted off into a medicated sleep as the system prepared him and his warriors for genetic enhancement and regeneration. His drifting thoughts were of the glorious spectacle he had witnessed in his battle dome of the young Barudii warrior skillfully vanquishing all the combatants, Horva and robot alike, that had been arrayed against him in the dome; even the teragore beast itself.
WHEN they arrived in the rail system chamber they found minimal power available. Daooth located the grid controls and brought the system online. The rail cars were kept in a docking bay apart from the magnetic propulsion tunnel. Daooth brought one of the cars from the bay on a loading arm as Wynn and the others brought the explosives into the loading area. It was quite a bomb they had rigged; almost too much for the hover carrier to support. It consisted of two containers of inert chemicals that became volatile when mixed; Zanthium 424 matrix and B7 accelerant.
“Two of us will need to go ahead of the car with the explosives and begin clearing the rubble from the tunnel,” said Wynn. “After that, one person needs to accompany the bomb in case there are any other obstructions in the tunnel.”
“Tiet, why don’t you go with Wynn and I will take the explosives on through after you,” said Orin.
“Are you sure Orin?” asked Wynn.
“I’ll make sure nothing interferes with the car reaching the facility,” said Orin.
“Daooth can load the cars into the propulsion tunnel and send us through from the control chamber here, so you will not need to operate the rail car yourself, but you will have to escape after it comes above ground inside the city. The rail system becomes a series of magnetic rings that are spaced along the track until it enters the cloning facility. However you will be inside the city at that point so you will have to be careful. Grod’s forces have undoubtedly already begun their assault.”
“What about our rail car that will be setting in the tunnel?” asked Tiet.
“Daooth can move our car into a passing cell located at different positions along the tunnel. They allow for cars to be displaced while others pass,” said Wynn. “We will go on ahead in this car and then I’ll communicate with you when its time to come through with the explosives.”
Wynn and Tiet climbed inside the rail car, which was quite long. It must have measured nearly thirty yards in length. Tiet and Orin exchanged glances as the door closed on the car. Orin tried to look reassuring.
He knew if anything happened to him, that Wynn would be able to continue Tiet’s training even beyond what he had been able to accomplish with the boy. But he had no intention of riding that rail car to his doom. He did wonder what would be waiting for him in a city full of Vorn military and potentially a Horva army led by Grod. Hopefully they would be so busy with each other that they wouldn’t even notice him.
The door of the car secured itself in a locking position as they sat down and fastened their seat harnesses for the trip. Daooth worked the controls causing the hoist arm to move the rail car into the propulsion tunnel. Once inside the mouth of the tunne
l, a safety door constricted into place behind the car so that the magnetic field would not harm anyone in the loading area. The field was powerful enough to pull a person with any metallic garment into the tunnel and potentially to their death.
The safety door sealed and the rail car was bathed in a magnetic field. The hoist arm released the car, which was then suspended within the magnetic field.
He hit the send command and the car began to propel forward down the tunnel, rapidly increasing speed to six hundred miles per hour. Within the car, Wynn and Tiet noticed little effect from inertia because of the damper systems in place.
“The trip will take a little over an hour to complete. I would suggest we both try to get some rest before we arrive. You’ll need it.”
“If you say so.”
The journey from his home on Castai seemed like an eternity ago and Tiet had gone nearly the whole time now without much sleep. He was glad they had at least had the opportunity to eat some food and clean up back at Wynn’s base in the caves.
He didn’t like being separated from Orin, but he had to stand on his own at some point, and he sensed it may have even been done on purpose when Orin sent him with Wynn. He rested his head back, noticing that Wynn already looked like he was asleep. Within moments he had also drifted into much needed sleep and not even his old nightmares could break through his exhaustion.
Orin made his way to the car holding the device. He boarded and found a seat, unconsciously glaring at the weapon as though it might blow at any moment. Daooth watched him from the control booth and manually closed the car door so he could secure it with the boom arm for loading into the tunnel.
Daooth noticed an odd power fluctuation on his panel. It was something he had seen before but he couldn’t…wait they’re monitoring the system!
“Orin! I have to send you on through quickly,” his voice came through on the rail car intercom.
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re monitoring the power emanations back at Nagon-Toth. If they’ve already noticed it they’ll be sending a squad to investigate. Strap yourself in, we’ve got to hurry.”
Orin didn’t waste any time with further inquiry. He located his safety harness and secured himself to the chair.
The boom arm swiveled over to attach to the car and he could hear the magnetic seal apply through the roof with a snap of metal. Daooth watched carefully as he guided the arm and placed the car inside the tunnel for departure. Once inside he released it and closed the safety door behind it. It took only a moment for the magnetic field to charge and build inside the tunnel and then the rail car was speeding down the tunnel.
Daooth secured the control station and locked out the system. Hopefully Grod’s men would not be able to disable it when they arrived to investigate. He ran out of the chamber and back through the secret tunnel entrance they had come by. It was time to get back to his quarters before he was missed.
TIET was shaken by the slowing and stopping of the rail car. He saw that Wynn was already out of his harness and looking through the front window at the tunnel blockage ahead. He removed his harness and joined him at the window. The lighting in the tunnel was adequate to see the large pile of heavy stones that were piled three quarters of the way up to the roof of the tunnel. A large hole that looked like the source of the rock could be seen going upward into the tunnel roof.
The rail car came to a halt approximately fifty yards from the blockage. The side door unlocked and opened automatically, no doubt under the watchful eye of Daooth hundreds of miles away in the control chamber. Tiet followed Wynn out the door and they bounded up the tunnel toward the rubble.
“Well, let’s get started,” said Tiet as he began to concentrate on the individual stones.
“I want you to move all the stones at once.”
“What do you mean? Are we able?”
“If you remember when we were on the roof of the General’s compound….”
“Yes,” interrupted Tiet, “you were controlling the automated weapons while simultaneously fighting the Horva! That was amazing.”
“It was easier than you realize. It is not in the amount of power, but in the technique for wielding it.”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“I mean that when you use the kinesis you are reaching out with your mind. You are probably used to reaching out in one direction at once. But you must learn to reach in all directions at once, as though you were surrounded in a sensory field and everything within the boundary of it were susceptible to your senses and your control. When these things are comprehended at once in your mind, you’re able to manipulate them, and the kinesis carries out the thought with action.”
Suddenly he was enthralled by this new understanding of the Barudii power insomuch that he nearly forgot why they were even here.
“When I was on the roof, you were in the dome with that teragore. I could reach out throughout the compound and in my mind I could see you fighting that beast. I admit it takes discipline and a lot of practice to begin thinking in this fashion, but you do have the ability. Of course it’s all made possible by the energies in play here. We don’t understand how, but the fact remains. It was the overlap through the Rift that gave us Barudii what power we had, but on this side we are much more powerful.”
“Could you teach me?”
“Within you I believe is the last hope for the Barudii to carry on as a race. We must do what we can to preserve what is left. You’re young and if you survive this war our people have hope to live again. I want to make as much of a contribution of what I have learned to that future as possible.
“Now, raise the rocks, Tiet. Reach out in all directions around you, feel the tunnel, the ground, the hole in the roof, even me standing here beside you, and then move the picture in your mind with determined intent.”
Tiet tried to let go of the way he would have normally gone about the task by trying to lift the boulders individually. He began to feel more and more around him. The picture of his surroundings was in his mind as though he had eyes on all sides, and even more, he could feel his surroundings in a way he had not previously realized.
He could sense the temperature of the air in the tunnel, the rhythms of Wynn’s bodily functions—heart rate, blood pumping, neurons firing—and he could feel it in a way that gave him confidence that he could manipulate any of it if he desired. His kinetic power felt like another appendage of his body. In his mind he searched over the surface of each piece of rock in the pile of rubble and could sense with exacting precision where it fit in the crumbled tunnel roof above.
He exerted his will upon the rock and it disassembled in his mind and in reality. It moved apart and seemed frozen in a moment of time with even the dust suspended in the air. Wynn was in awe, not at the possibility of performing the task, but in Tiet’s quickness to apprehend the concept and be able to apply it so skillfully. He was his father’s son indeed. The rock began to ascend upward and reassemble into the places it had previously occupied in the cavernous hole.
Once it was all in place, Tiet held it there but was unsure what to do to keep it all in place. Wynn fused the joints of the rock with his mind and Tiet could feel them supported by it. He released the structure and it held.
“I could sense your power working within the same space as my own and I could sense my susceptibility to your mind. Was that real?”
“It was real but not indefensible. If I were to attack you kinetically, you could shield yourself from the intrusion and prevent such an attack and possibly even counter it if you sensed that I was unprotected in some way.”
His communications link beeped to life on his wrist.
“Daooth here. How are you progressing with the repair?”
“It is already complete my friend.”
“Good. Orin is already en route with the other rail car and the explosives. He should be arriving at your location; within half an hour. I had to leave the station because I realized they are monitoring this place fr
om Nagon-Toth.
“I have been monitoring transmissions from the compound about Baeth Periege. Grod’s forces have already penetrated the city and were able to disable part of the city’s perimeter shield. The Vorn are attempting to keep them at bay, but from the communications among the Horva they are probably well on their way to entering with their main group of forces.”
“The sooner we send that rail car into the cloning facility the better,” said Wynn.
“I agree. You will need to reenter the rail car. Now that the blockage is cleared, the automated system will take control and position your car safely inside a passing cell in the tunnel wall.”
Tiet followed him back into their rail car. The door closed automatically and an alarm sounded to notify the passengers of an approaching car in transit. The computer began its procedure for clearing the path of the other rail car in the system as a hoist arm moved away from the tunnel wall to magnetically grasp Wynn and Tiet’s car; pulling it into the recessed portion of the wall known as a passing cell. The car locked in place as it prepared for the passing of Orin’s car; counting down now from twenty two minutes.
IX
ORIN sat uneasily within the second rail car as it made its way down the dim tunnel, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour toward Baeth Periege. The explosives setup, located in the car, was rigged for an explosion upon the car’s stopping and Daooth had wired its trigger directly into the auto sensor panel for that purpose.
The computer controls for the magnetic rail system would automatically bring the car into the cloning facility for unloading and stop it at a preordained station within the compound. When the auto sensors signaled a full stop it would detonate the care package. All he had to do was make sure nothing prevented the car on its journey and then escape himself where the system came above ground.
Daooth had sent the car into the blocked tunnel under repair conditions, but with the removal of the tunnel blockage, the automated system had assumed control again. Orin was glad to know that they had been successful in clearing whatever debris had been up ahead.